The development of international arbitration as an autonomous legal order is one of the most remarkable stories of institution building at the global level over the past century. Today, transnational firms and states settle their most important commercial and investment disputes not in courts, but in arbitral centres, a tightly networked set of organizations that compete with one another for docket, resources, and influence.

In this book, Alec Stone Sweet and Florian Grisel show that international arbitration has undergone a self-sustaining process of institutional evolution that has steadily enhanced arbitral authority. This judicialization process was sustained by the explosion of trade and investment, which generated a steady stream of high stakes disputes, and the efforts of elite arbitrators and the major centres to construct arbitration as a viable substitute for litigation in domestic courts. For their part, state officials (as legislators and treaty makers), and national judges (as enforcers of arbitral awards), have not just adapted to the expansion of arbitration; they have heavily invested in it, extending the arbitral order's reach and effectiveness. Arbitration's very success has, nonetheless, raised serious questions about its legitimacy as a mode of transnational governance.

The book provides a clear causal theory of judicialization using original data and analysis, and a broad, relatively non-technical overview of the evolution of the arbitral order. Each chapter compares international commercial and investor-state arbitration, across clearly specified measures of judicialization and governance. Topics include: the evolution of procedures; the development of precedent and the demand for appeal; balancing in the public interest; legitimacy debates and proposals for systemic reform. This book is a timely assessment of how arbitration has risen to become a key component of international economic law and why its future is far from settled.

EU law requires the EU to place ‘the individual at the heart of its activities’, to take ‘decisions as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen’, and protect citizens and their fundamental rights also in the external relations of the EU. Free trade agreements (FTAs) protecting rights and remedies of citizens have been uniquely successful in European integration for providing transnational public goods (PGs) like equal rights of citizens, rule of law, open markets promoting general consumer welfare, and empowerment of citizens to use their ‘republican virtues’ for enforcing trade and competition rules in national and European courts. In FTA negotiations with non-European countries, however, the EU disregards its ‘cosmopolitan foreign policy mandate’ and regulatory ‘consistency’ requirements by emulating intergovernmental power politics of non-European trading countries. Rather than protecting fundamental rights and judicial remedies in domestic courts in economic integration among transatlantic democracies, the EU's transatlantic FTAs risk undermining fundamental rights and judicial remedies. Parliaments in the EU have not challenged the ‘disempowerment’ of citizens and ‘re-feudalization’ of EU trade policies through intergovernmental trade diplomacy. Citizens challenge interest group politics in transatlantic FTAs and the EU’s neglect for participatory and deliberative democracy and ‘subsidiarity’ in EU trade regulations of transnational ‘market failures’ and ‘governance failures’. The EU's new 'investment court provisions' in recent FTAs (e.g. with Canada) risk 're-fragmenting' international investment law; they are no model for reforming international investment law.

Ample research has demonstrated that exposure to inadmissible evidence affects decision-making in criminal and civil cases. However, the difficulty of ignoring information in the context of legal interpretation has not been examined yet. Our study addresses the possible effects that exposure to preparatory work has on the interpretation of treaties. In the present article, we examine the ability of students enrolled in international law courses and of international law experts to ignore preparatory work when they are not allowed to use it. We found that exposure to preparatory work affected the students’ interpretation of treaties, while no such effect was found among the experts. These results reaffirm the practical relevance of the debate over the hierarchy between the rules of treaty interpretation. In particular, our study demonstrates that preparatory work can play a significant role in decision-making, depending on the legal rule that applies to the use of such materials. More generally, our study suggests that legal interpretation by students and experts is qualitatively different, and that international law experts might be better able than non-experts to discount irrelevant information in the process of treaty interpretation.

While an abundance of literature covers the right of states to defend themselves against external aggression, this is the first book dedicated to the right to personal self-defense in international law. Drawing on his extensive experience as a human rights practitioner and scholar, Dr. Hessbruegge sets out in careful detail the strict requirements that human rights impose on defensive force by law enforcement authorities, especially police killings in self-defense. The book also discusses the exceptional application of the right to personal self-defense in military-led operations, notably to contain violent civilians who do not directly participate in hostilities.

Human rights also establish parameters on how broad or narrow the laws can be drawn on self-defense between private persons. Setting out the prevailing international standards, the book critically examines the ongoing trend to excessively broaden self-defense laws. It also refutes the claim that there is a human right to possess firearms for self-defense purposes.

In extraordinary circumstances, the right to personal self-defence sharpens human rights and allows people to defend themselves against the state. Here the author establishes that international law gives individuals the right to forcibly resist human rights violations that pose a serious risk of significant and irreparable harm. At the same time, he calls into question prevailing state practice, which fails to recognize any collective right to organized armed resistance even when it constitutes the last resort to defend against genocide or other mass atrocities.

This chapter discusses the provisions in the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) on the protection of labour and environmental standards and human rights. It first outlines the obligations of the parties to protect labour and environmental standards, human rights and democratic principles. Next, it discusses certain means by which the economic obligations of the parties may be interpreted, either expressly or by implication, to reflect these values. Third, it analyses the rights of the parties, in the context of exceptions, to adopt measures to protect labour and environmental standards and human right obligations, and the extent to which CETA’s obligations might expand the ordinary jurisdictional scope of these rights.

A call for contributions has been issued for a volume on "Migration and the Environment: Some Reflections on Current Legal Issues and Possible Ways Forward." Here's the call:

The Department of Law of the University of Naples “Federico II” and the Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development of the National Research Council of Italy are working jointly on the analysis of the link between Migration and Development. In the context of this cooper- ation, and following the publication of the collective volume Migration and Development: Some Re- flections on Current Legal Issues, Rome, 2016 (open access at http://eprints.bice.rm.cnr.it/15914/), they have decided to issue a call for papers for a second volume intended to address the specific issue of the relationship between human migration and the environment.

The link between migration and the environment is not new, environmental conditions have always influenced human mobility. However, the nature, the dynamics and the scale of environment related migration have dramatically changed in recent years, and the complex nexus between migration and the environment has drawn increasing attention in the contemporary international context.

This relationship is not easy to outline for several reasons, including the range of environmental phe- nomena that may cause migration flows (natural disaster as well as gradual process of environmental deterioration), the difficulty of isolating environmental factors from other political, social and eco- nomic drivers of migration, the complexity of differentiating between forced and voluntary migra- tions in cases of environment-induced flows. In addition, from a different perspective, migratory flows may contribute to environmental degradation in the areas of destination and transit, giving rise to phenomena such as unmanaged urbanization or temporary camps or shelter that produce further pressure on the environment.

The complexity of the link between migration and the environment challenges the current legal par- adigm in which migration is largely framed and calls into question the adequacy of the existing pro- tection frameworks. In several international fora, it is increasingly recognized that there are certain groups of people who move for environmental reasons and are in need of assistance and who currently fall outside of the scope of international protection.

The goal of the volume on Migration and the Environment: Some Reflections on Current Legal Issues and Possible Ways Forward is to discuss the extent to which people whose movements are induced by environmental factors are protected under the existing international legal framework, to investigate the main legal issues and the normative gaps and to analyze the solutions being discussed in the international arena.

Contributions can cover, inter alia, the following areas:

Extent of the protection under international refugee law and the feasibility (and desira- bility) of an expansion of the notion of refugee;

Human rights law and forms of complementary protection at the regional and national levels (EU, USA, Canada …);

International instruments for the protection of Internally Displaced Persons;

The international agenda for the protection of cross-border displaced persons in the con- text of natural disaster and climate change;

Climate change and human mobility in the context of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and UNSustainable Development Goals;

The case of low-lying island States;

International instruments for the protection of stateless people.

The call for papers aims to offer an opportunity for experts, scholars and policy makers, for a critical
review of the outcomes, implications and achievements on the relevant questions of international law
on international migration and the environment.

Abstracts of no more than 500 words, written in English or French and including the author’s name and e-mail address, should be submitted to the following e-mail address: migrationandevelopment@gmail.com.

A one-page curriculum vitae should be attached to the abstract.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 30 March 2017.

Successful applicants will be notified via e-mail by 10 April 2017 and are expected to produce the final paper (8000-10000 words approx.) by 15 September 2017.

The Harvard International Law Journal is now accepting article submissions for Volume 59,
Issue 1. The Journal seeks to publish innovative, original scholarship that makes a significant
contribution to the field of international law. We welcome submissions from legal scholars,
practitioners, and doctoral degree candidates on topics of private or public international law and
related fields, including interdisciplinary work. (For information about student submissions, visit
our website.) Please note that we do not generally publish articles on foreign or comparative law
unless they raise and significantly engage with issues of international law.

Submissions Requirements:

While we may accept articles of up to 30,000 words, we prefer submissions of between 15,000
and 25,000 words, including footnotes. All articles should be typed in English with text
double-spaced. Manuscripts must be submitted online via ExpressO. In addition to the article,
submissions should include a short abstract, a CV with a list of recent publications, and current
contact information. Footnotes should conform with The Bluebook: A Uniform System of
Citation (20th Ed.).

Submissions Process:

Articles will be reviewed on a rolling basis in February and March by a Submissions Committee
comprised of J.D. and LL.M./S.J.D candidates, and may also be reviewed by our faculty advisors
and/or scholars in our peer network. If short-listed, the article will be sent to the ILJ Executive
Board for a final decision.We endeavor to respond to authors within a month of receiving a
submission, but we are unfortunately unable to provide feedback for articles that are not selected.
Once an article has been selected, the Editors-in-Chief will contact the author with a contract and
further information on the publication process. The ILJ editorial process is a rigorous one, and
authors should expect to work closely with Journal staff on substantial substantive and technical
revisions prior to the article’s final publication.

Monica Hakimi (Univ. of Michigan - Law) has posted The Work of International Law (Harvard International Law Journal, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This Article crystallizes and then critiques a prominent view about the role of international law in the global order. The view — what I call the “cooperation thesis” — is that international law serves to help global actors cooperate, specifically by: (1) curbing their disputes, and (2) promoting their shared goals. The cooperation thesis often appears as a positive account of international law; it purports to explain or describe what international law does. But it also has normative force; international law is widely depicted as dysfunctional when it does not satisfy the thesis. In particular, heated or intractable conflict is thought to betray the limits of international law — to show that, on some issues, international law is not serving its functions.

That view of international law is conceptually flawed. It incorrectly assumes that conflict is an impediment to international law or a problem for international law to mitigate. As scholars from other disciplines have shown, however, conflict is symbiotic with the very functions that the thesis prizes. Even as international law enables global actors to curb their disputes and work toward their shared aims, it also enables them to do the opposite: to hone in on their differences and disagree — at times fiercely and without resolution. It does so because the two kinds of interactions are interdependent, and the legal mechanisms for both are the same. To put the point more starkly, conflict does not necessarily reveal deficiencies in international law because enabling it is inherent in the project of international law.

International lawyers and courts discuss the principle of systemic integration as the answer to certain difficulties arising from fragmentation of public international law. This article questions the main propositions pertaining international law scholarship and judicial practice as far as the application of systemic integration of treaties in the human rights area is concerned. The article argues, first, that, in many instances, the application of systemic integration raises serious interpretation and jurisdictional concerns. Second, the article submits that systemic integration may create new hegemonies among international courts and give rise to a less diverse and poorer international law in the future.

As law hinges on the imprecise instrument that is language, legal norms or legally relevant acts, accordingly, often may be vague or ambiguous. International law is no exception in this regard. However, in international legal thinking on the interpretation of international norms or acts, vagueness and ambiguity (VaA) are usually perceived as a problem, an obscurity to be resolved. This contribution intends to take a fresh look at vagueness and ambiguity in this latter context. It will present an analytical framework systematizing five different categories of looking at VaA in interpreting international law and thereupon employ these categories to scrutinize, in descending order of abstraction, VaA’s implications vis-à-vis several issues of international legal thinking, including the exercise of authority and international adjudication. Thereby it seeks to demonstrate the benefits of moving vagueness and ambiguity from the periphery to the centre of international legal thinking on interpretation.

The Asian Society of International Law’s Interest Group on International Law in Domestic Courts has issued a call for papers for a workshop to be held August 24, 2017, in Seoul. Here’s the call:

Asian SIL Interest Group on International Law in Domestic Courts

24 August 2017

Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea

On the occasion of the Sixth Biennial Conference of the Asian Society of International Law (which takes place on 25-26 August), the Society’s Interest Group on International Law in Domestic Courts (IG - ILDC) is organizing a half-day workshop on the ways Asian courts invoke, interpret and apply international law. For decades, judiciaries across Asia have turned to international treaties, and customary international law, to resolve disputes between private actors on the one hand, and between individuals and the states on the other. Despite this widespread practice, insufficient attention has been paid to the Asian countries’ reception of international law. We hope to use this opportunity to spur scholarly reflection on state practice from any Asian jurisdiction.

Participants may wish to address the following topics:

interpretive methods used by courts to enforce obligations under international human rights treaties;

why courts enforce (or refuse) arbitral awards under the New York Convention;

direct and indirect applications of the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods;

the rights of prisoners of war under the Geneva and Hague Conventions, or other sources of international humanitarian law; and

courts’ citation to reports, recommendations and comments issued by treaty-monitoring bodies and international organizations; and

invocation of unincorporated treaties.

This is by no means an exhaustive list; interested participants are encouraged to reflect on these, and other, topics that would fall within this general category.

Interested researchers and practitioners should send a 500-word abstract and a short bio to the convenors of the IG-ILDC: m.kanetake@uu.nl (Machiko Kanetake) and tjw71@case.edu (Tim Webster). The deadline is 23 April 2017.

Selected participants will be informed by 15 May 2017. Preference will be given to current members of the Asian Society of International Law.

Each participant must submit a short paper (5-10 pages) by 15 August 2017 for distribution to the other participants.

Panelists will be expected to cover their own travel and lodging costs.

The Leiden Journal of International Law has issued a call for papers for a symposium on "The Trajectories of International Legal Histories," to take place October 20, 2017, in The Hague. Here's the call:

Call for Papers

‘The Trajectories of International Legal Histories’

LJIL@30 Anniversary Symposium20 October 2017, 11am-6pm, The Hague

Keynote by Prof. Gerry Simpson (LSE)

Thirty years ago, the Leiden Journal of International Law (LJIL) was born, at a time when the writing of histories was hardly a popular endeavor for international legal scholars. In his 1987 article ‘Probleme der Völkerrechtsgeschichte’ (‘The Problems of International Legal History’), Heinhard Steiger argued that only very few, ‘mostly authors of the older generation’, were interested in international legal history. Despite a few notable exceptions, this field of inquiry was still in an embryonic state in the late 1980s.

Much has changed since that time. On the occasion of its 30th anniversary, the LJIL will convene a symposium on The Trajectories of International Legal Histories. The aim is to pay tribute to the remarkable developments within this field, to engage in critical reflection on the directions that it has taken, and to discuss the potential avenues for future research. We anticipate that participants will seize the occasion to speak to ongoing debates, and possibly trigger new ones. The symposium will engage with questions of methodology and perspective. We hope that it will encourage further historical work on international law and reveal the new possible ways of its application.

Some general, basic—and truly intriguing—questions that we are looking to pursue are: Why do international lawyers write and debate international legal histories, and how do their perspectives differ from those of other scholars? How can legal histories be tied to, and yet transcend, specific disciplinary, geographic, socio-cultural and political contexts? Why, in writing histories of international law, have we asked the questions that we have asked? And which questions have we failed to ask? What drives a historical ‘turn’ in particular areas of international law? In what ways do our understandings of the past shape our perceptions of the present and the future, and vice versa? (How) should we write histories of particular fields and of international law as a whole? Which international legal histories should be (re)written, and by whom?

The first panel will focus upon some of the general questions described in the programme, in particular: what drives the growing interest in international legal history, and what enables the pursuit of the historical projects in international law? How have experiences of the past shaped both perceptions of the present and future, and the writing of international legal histories? Conversely, how do present locations affect readings of the past and choices of historical subjects and methodology? How can or should such connections be drawn? The panel will further speak to the different stages in international legal history, and reflect on the question of how international legal histories might be written (well).

Panel II. Writing and mediating legal histories—Plural origins and conceptions of international law

The second panel will focus on recent projects of writing histories of international law. Papers in this session will provide insight into questions of methodology and sources, periodization, selection of subjects, and context taken up in specific projects. With different histories being written on the same subjects in parallel and in relation to different fields of international law, the emerging historical narratives may be complementary, speak past each other, or give rise to tensions and clashes. How can we make sense of the different historical perspectives, and how can (or should) they be mediated? This panel could provide an ideal starting point for investigating how (and whether) international legal histories might be both situated in and transcend their particular contexts.

Panel III. Fields of engagement: International legal history and …?

The third panel will have a dual focus. First, it will explore the intersections of international legal history with other fields and overarching conceptual frameworks (e.g. political economy, critical studies, postcolonial theory etc.). Second, it will address the turn to legal history in the specialized subject-matter areas of international law and examine whether and how its ethic and method reshape the disciplinary agenda and discourses. First, this angle might deepen our understanding of international law’s structure, and broaden our awareness of the material relevant to its analysis. Secondly, it might reflect upon the ultimate objectives of historical work in international law, allowing us to think about why it is that we write the histories we write, and what questions we fail to explore. We anticipate that the papers will go beyond exposing certain histories as conquerors’ histories, and turn their attention also to the less obvious blind spots and structural determinants of our historical projects in specific fields and in international law more generally.

Submission of Proposals and Timeline

Paper proposals should include a description of ca. 500 words and the applicant’s curriculum vitae.

Email to: ljil@law.leidenuniv.nl.

The deadline is 15 March 2017. Selected participants will be notified by 1 April 2017.

Participants must submit draft papers by 1 October.

We plan to publish a selection of the contributions in the LJIL.

Please note that we can contribute to travelling and accommodation expenses, but of a select number of participants only.

Arbitral Awards as Investments analyzes the treatment of arbitral awards as investments within international investment law. The rise of international investment arbitration has resulted in the emergence of a number of intriguing legal and political challenges. One of those is the question of whether or not arbitral awards may constitute investments pursuant to existing investment treaties. In approaching the problem, it is the interconnection between theory and practice that delivers solutions. This book presents the first detailed analysis of tribunals’ approaches to this question to date and examines the interpretative outcomes.

This live online briefing, the second in the Society's new series on "International Law and the Trump Administration," will feature two former U.S. deputy assistant secretaries of state for international organization affairs: Bathsheba Crocker (2014-2017) and Mark P. Lagon (2004-2007). They will discuss the role of the U.N. on a broad range of global issues; the challenges it faces in advancing its mission; its relationship to the United States and its importance to U.S. national interests; criticisms of the institution and proposed reforms; and the prospects for continued U.S. support.

The Jean Monnet Network LAWTTIP, a partnership between the University of Bologna, King’s College London, and University of Rennes 1, has issued a call for papers for a conference on "TTIP and Beyond: Negotiating and Implementing the EU’s Free Trade Agreements in an Uncertain Environment," to take place June 15-16, 2017, in Rennes. The call is here.

The idea that international law requires that a breach is undone and reparation is provided is central to law as such – no less so to international law. Take away the notion of responsibility, and much of how we think about international law and why it matters starts to transform. This paper explores the structuring role of responsibility in international legal discourse, and discusses how transformations in the international legal system that move the dominant interstate system to the background inevitably affect the structuring role of international responsibility.

The Palestine Yearbook of International Law is now inviting submissions of scholarly
articles for publication for Volume XX (2017). This is a general call for papers, but the
Yearbook would particularly welcome submissions that focus on the themes associated with
three anniversaries that will be marked in 2017 and which are relevant to Palestine. These are
the 100 year anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the 70 year anniversary of the UN Plan
of Partition for Palestine, and the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza
Strip and East Jerusalem. As always, the editors also encourage the submission of scholarly
pieces of relevance to public international law in general, including but not necessarily in
relation to Palestine.

The Yearbook is published in the English language, is edited at Birzeit University’s Institute
of Law (Birzeit, Palestine), and published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers (The Hague, The
Netherlands). The Editor-in-Chief of the Yearbook is Mr. Ardi Imseis.

Important dates and contact information

Prospective authors should express interest by e-mailing an abstract (of under 750 words) of
the suggested paper as indicated above, along with a CV by 15 March 2017. If full
manuscripts are available by that date, prospective authors should feel free to send those
instead by that date. All submissions should be made to:

On the occasion of the ESIL 13th Annual Conference (Naples, 7-9 September 2017) the ESIL Interest Group on the History of International Law hereby invites submissions, in English or in French, for its annual Workshop.

Call for Papers

During the past two decades the history of international law has evolved from a relatively marginal enterprise into a core professional concern and, in certain fields, a controlling vocabulary. The phenomenon, which is often captioned as a “turn to history”, is marked both by an exponential growth in publications and activities (journals, conferences, interest groups, blogs) and a re-invention of historical work as mode of critical analysis. One could begin to list several characteristics of the turn to history: the move away from trans-historical evolutionary accounts towards global, micro-, and subaltern histories; critiques of Eurocentrism; the emergence of histories of sub-fields of international law; socio-historical accounts of the international law profession; a renewed interest in archival work; an unprecedented interest in methodological questions; the role of historical accounts in judicial decisions; and so on. The purpose of the Workshop of the ESIL Interest Group on the History of International Law is to trace these disciplinary developments and evaluate their impact on contemporary international law scholarship and practice.

In this context, the IGHIL invites submissions by scholars working within the fields of international law, history, and politics on the following inter-related themes:

The impact of the historical turn on the methods of international legal history

The impact of the historical turn in sub-fields of international law (e.g. human rights, international criminal law, diplomatic history etc)

The impact of the historical turn on evaluating the historical function of international courts and tribunals

The impact of the historical turn on Eurocentrism

The impact of global, micro, subaltern, and other histories on international law historiography

Each submission should include

a) An abstract of no more than 400 words;
b) The intended language of presentation;
c) A short curriculum vitae containing the author’s name, institutional affiliation, contact information and e-mail address.

Abstracts must be submitted no later than 15 March 2017 to esilighil@gmail.com on behalf of the Steering Committee of the Interest Group, which shall collectively supervise the blind peer-review process of the abstracts. Applicants will be notified on the outcome of the selection process by 30 March 2017.

Selection will be based on scholarly merit and with regard to producing an engaging workshop, without prejudice to gender, seniority, language or geographical location. Please note that the ESIL Interest Group on the History of International Law is unable to provide funds to cover the conference registration fee or related transport and accommodation costs.

The IG currently investigates publication possibilities for selected abstracts.